Pussy Riot - guilty

Just announced. While we're all discussing the merits of another so called human rights campaigner.....

Three members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot are in court today to hear the verdict in their trial on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, following the performance of a "punk prayer" against Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.

Prosecutors have asked for three year jail sentences for Maria
Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, arguing they had insulted all of Russian Orthodoxy and if not jailed would
pose a continuing danger to society. Their defence team has argued
that the women's performance was an act of opposition against Putin
and that the prosecution was politically motivated.

Defenders outside the court room, including human rights groups,
Madonna and Sir Paul McCartney, have backed the women in the name of freedom of speech and conscience.

In a letter to her supporters on Thursday, Tolokonnikova wrote: " I
have no private spite. But I have political spite. Our being in jail
is a clear and distinct sign that freedom is being taken away from the
whole country ... And this threat of destruction of the liberating,
emancipatory forces of Russia is what makes me angry."
The women have argued that their February performance inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour - singing "Virgin Mary, drive Putin away!" - was designed to call attention to the politicisation of the
Orthodox church, which was a key agitator for Putin's re-election.
Church officials have said their trial was willed by God.

WTF are the Russian authorities doing? If they had just ignored it nothing would have happened. But bang them up and the whole world gets to know about it when it is sat on the khazi at 6:00am listening to the radio.

Every single person who supports the church in Russia and the government of Russia from this point in, and (by extension) the symbiotic relationship that supports both of those evil and corrupt institutions, is a scumbag.

Lifer. When you have finished having a pop at me for daring to describe a suspected multiple sex offender as a human rights campaigner do you care to flag your support for actual human rights campaigners in Putin's Russia?

mcboo - Member
Lifer. When you have finished having a pop at me for daring to describe a suspected multiple sex offender as a human rights campaigner do you care to flag your support for actual human rights campaigners in Putin's Russia?

Why, does Putin read STW and place particular gravitas on my opinion of his conduct?